Made it ...

Yes, in a sense that's just what I did - I made the pudding and I made another year in sufficiently fine fettle to cook a rather splendid meal and share it with my bestie and her man, our oldest friends here. I can't recall now where we started this custom, though it may have been when Himself and I were invited over to Ewan's for Christmas, thus ending that part of my life when I did the matriarch thing with the turkey and so on. Di, on the other hand, was cooking for her family, so this was my turn: fillet of venison from our local stalker, cooked pink in a hot oven, wonderful red wine gravy made with the trimmings, roasted spuds and mixed veg - including the bits of roasted satsuma to chew with the carrots - followed by my Christmas pudding, saved for tonight, flamed with a ladleful of brandy I'd heated and lit at one of the candles on the windowsill. ( I always think that's a cool thing to do ...) I'm obliged to Di for taking this reasonably flattering photo as I did the pouring bit.

Of course, we'd already had a normal Sunday, with church in the morning instead of getting on with the vegetables. It was a friend's last Sunday - a fellow-singer as well as the depute organist, she's off to the Islands - so at the end of the service Himself worked his magic to weave the melody "Will ye no' come back again?" onto the end of his final voluntary, and then there was a great deal of chat.

So that is why I spent the afternoon doing clever things with spuds and veg and wrestling the big skillet out of the back of the cupboard for its annual use for searing the fillet, why I only had half an hour to sit before it was time to tart myself up a bit and do the final touches. I think we may all have had a mini-doze at some time during the evening, until the time for the bells and the toasts (in fizz rather than whisky; Himself forgot we'd finished it). Now Di and Rob have vanished down the path to drive home, Himself is washing up, and I'm here writing far too much when really all I want is a cup of tea ...as the family messages ping in (you get fireworks if you type in Happy New Year). I'm going to make tea right now and sit down with it. 

No fireworks, but ... Happy New Year!